‘Antibiotic-producing bacteria which live on the ants, known as actinomyces, are the raw material for 60 percent of known antibiotics. The ants feed the bacteria living on them through specialized glands in their exoskeletons and use the antibiotics produced by these bacteria to kill off other microbes that would otherwise infect their fungus garden. If the ants smell infected parts of the fungus they remove it, dump it away from the nest and use anti fungal antibiotics on it to sterilize it. Ant species that farm fungi (Attini ants) have most likely been using antibiotics for more than 50 million years to protect these fungus gardens from pests.’ — I wonder how these ants and their symbiotic antibiotic-producing bacteria have been spared from having the microbes that attack their fungus farms develop antibiotic resistance...perhaps because these are antibiotic-producing bacteria that have evolved to relentlessly vary the mechanism of their antibiotics enough that the tendency of target bacteria to evolve resistance is controlled-for? Googling as we speak to try to understand more...I looked to see what answers would materialize to the question of whether antibiotic resistance can de-evolve as well as evolve and immediately found a Tufts University explainer that said ‘antibiotic resistance traits can be lost, but this reverse process occurs more slowly. If the selective pressure that is applied by the presence of an antibiotic is removed, the bacterial population can potentially revert to a population of bacteria that responds to antibiotics.’ More reason to suspect that maybe a battery of different variations on antibiotics in a fungus-bacteria-ant symbiosis balanced to resist the fungus would keep the population of target bacteria from ever being pressured to the point where the decisive evolution of resistance would occur...fascinating. How, indeed, to save ourselves and how to save these natural and cultural repositories of biotechnology?!